Asked about the current showdown at City Hall, Aguirre said both politicians erred. He said Goldsmith shouldn’t have held the news conference and Filner shouldn’t have gone to it.

Aguirre said the current officeholders should look back at the dysfunctional relationship he had with Sanders and understand that model didn’t work well for the city.

“Each one of them has to recognize that you need to have two keys to turn the lock, you need the city attorney key and you need the mayor’s key,” Aguirre said. “They may not like each other, but both of them have been put there by the voters so they both have to respect each other. That’s the one lesson that I learned from my experience is that sometimes the best you can do is make something not as bad as it could have been. But you don’t necessarily get to have your way and that’s the reality of public service. In our check and balance system, you have to have more than one person who gets to decide what the public interest is.”